Free Murder by Reflection by H. F. Heard

“profession,” didn’t much like being counterdiagnosed.
    â€œAll right; come out where we can enjoy the view. I’m not busy now.”
    â€œThat’s all right for you amateurs, but a sole city official has little time to spare.”
    As Kermit followed out the city’s godfather he smiled behind the great good mixer’s back. Doc, however, not seeing the smile, strolled along. He was quite at his ease now that he had made it clear that he was not wasting his time, for he had officially seconded himself for his alternative duties, civic preventive peace work, as he liked to call it.
    â€œEverything all right in the burg?” queried Kermit when they were seated on the log by the colonnade.
    Given that proper invitation, Doc opened, “Always have found, Hal, that the onlooker sees most of the game.”
    â€œWell, a wide-angled lens takes in most of the field.”
    â€œAll right; I want it turned on part of our city that ranges from the schoolhouse to the Plantation Mansion, and, if we can’t keep it focused, we’ll soon have all the city in the picture. You’re used to taking people in—I mean sizing them up.”
    â€œWell, one can’t have spent thirty years of one’s life looking at homely people knowing they hope they’re handsome, and trying to make the camera not be too candid, without knowing something about human nature.” They laughed. “You used to say, ‘look pleasant, please.’ But soon the good photographer dropped that phrase. Law of Reversed Effort, I believe psychologists now call it, but we photographers, I’ll bet, found it out. As soon as you said that fatal word ‘pleasant’ they’d look as though you were going to shoot them, literally. ‘Just feel easy’ was the next try—why, that actually made them squint.”
    â€œâ€™Spect you’re right,” said Doc, anxious to avoid another return to pure research. “I’ve noticed that if you come with special-delivery mail, how on edge they are even at that, and how they’ll often be rude just because they’ve got a little fear of you as the official with the papers they can’t read and are to sign.”
    â€œHave you been disturbing someone, carrying them echoes of alimonial pursuit?”
    â€œNo. The case I’m talking over with you isn’t that normal nuisance. Fact is, it’s a bit out of the common—the eternal triangle, but this time stood on end.” Doc was pleased with this simile and waited a moment for his mot to register. “Hal,” he used to say to his wife, “can take an instantaneous photo but, living alone up there, you have to make every really good remark a time-exposure if it’s to tell.”
    â€œYou mean ‘from one generation to another’?” The delayed reaction was after all not so lengthy.
    â€œThat’s it. It’s a little queer, maybe, to the layman, but psychologists know” (he nearly put “we” before the professional word) “that in fact it’s quite a common behavior pattern. ‘Smother love’ is the name that’s now becoming popular for it.”
    â€œWell, what can you do about it? They’ll have to outgrow it for themselves. You can’t make a chick hatch if it prefers to stay yolked!”
    Doc disdained to notice the pun. “It’s not as simple as all that, and I hope a man in my position doesn’t interfere unless he has reason.” He paused. “I know which way scandal goes. It always follows the line of a real flaw.” He cleared his throat, for Doc was a convincedly conventional gentleman. “I have no evidence,” he said judiciously, “that Mrs. Heron and her son are blood relations.”
    â€œYou mean …”
    â€œI mean exactly what I say,” replied Doc, and immediately said the more which showed that of course he meant more.